After feeling “a bit violated” by the all-seeing, all-knowing full body scanner at Buffalo International Airport, Ms. Buckley opted for the hands-on pat-down when she was going through the airport in Pittsburgh.

Aside from the extra wait — and the eye-rolling response from the screener when she refused the full-body scan — she writes that her pat-down was “the most civilized we’ve ever had, by a mile.”

According to Buckley, the screener outlined the entire procedure in advance and then subsequently asked for consent every time her hands moved to a different area of the body.

Writes Buckley:

It was completely painless and astonishingly civilized…
All in all, it took about five minutes more than going through the machine, but we’d take that any day over a scan again – and we even made the guy feel guilty for groaning at us when we said we’d felt gross after we’d been scanned the day before. From now on, we’ll be requesting a patdown wherever we go.

Of course, the question remains as to whether or not this pat-down is any substitute for a full-body scan or even the old-fashioned detectors.